in August 2002, a team at the State University of New York (SUNY) announced that it had made a virus from scratch, by chemistry alone.

What this meant was that, for the first time since life began over 3.5bn years ago, a living organism had been created with genetic material that was not inherited from a progenitor.

To what did the SUNY researchers choose to award the honour of being the first synthetic organism? They selected a virus that scientists have spent decades trying to eradicate, a cause of human disability and death: polio.

Building known viruses from the genome up is one thing, but some researchers are redesigning DNA itself. "I suspect that in five years or so, the artificial genetic systems that we have developed will be supporting an artificial lifeform that can reproduce, evolve, learn and respond to environmental change," says Steven Benner, a chemical biologist at the University of Florida. Benner is no stranger to the controversy that this is likely to excite. Sixteen years ago he organised a conference in Switzerland that pre-empted the new field of synthetic biology. It was to have been called "Redesigning life." "The conference title raised such a furore that it had to be changed to 'Redesigning the molecules of life,'" says Benner. "People were convinced that the original title would incite riots."
(via betterhumans)

Friday, 30 July 2004

In his book, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower," William Blum warns of how the media will make anything that smacks of "conspiracy theory" an immediate "object of ridicule."

This prevents the media from ever having to investigate the many strange interconnections among the ruling class - for example, the relationship between the boards of directors of media giants, and the energy, banking and defense industries. These unmentionable topics are usually treated with what Blum calls "the media's most effective tool - silence." But in case somebody's asking questions, all you have to do is say, "conspiracy theory," and any allegation instantly becomes too frivolous to merit serious attention.

A new generation of cash machines that can greet customers by name, and remember what services they require, is coming to Britain. The machines will be able to automatically offer customers the service they usually ask for. And while transactions are being processed they can even remind users of important dates - such as family birthdays, or upcoming payments of bills or car insurance.

The so-called U.S.-VISIT program took the dubious honour at the Big Brother Awards, presented by London-based watchdog Privacy International to individuals and organizations “that have done the most to invade personal privacy in Britain.”

The group said it took the unusual step of giving the award to a U.S. initiative because the “offensive and invasive” plan “has been undertaken with little or no debate or scrutiny.”

Starting in September, most foreign nationals will be required to be fingerprinted and photographed before entering the United States.

Privacy International also handed out awards to British government plans to track children through “intrusive databases and information systems” and for an “insecure and dangerous” plan to computerize National Health Service patient records.

British Gas was named worst corporate offender for claiming that data-protection laws prevented it from informing social welfare authorities that it had disconnected the gas supply to the home of an elderly couple who subsequently died. Hypothermia was found to be a contributor to the man's death.

A campaign worker for President Bush said on Thursday American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones -- or pop a Prozac to make themselves feel better.
(via information inquest dot com)

From Saturday, children aged 14 to 17 in 10 pilot areas of England will be tested for cocaine, heroin and crack when charged with property crimes.

plus

A radical scheme to vaccinate children against future drug addiction is being considered by ministers, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take. Such vaccinations are being developed by pharmaceutical companies and are due to hit the market within two years.

Professor Nutt, head of psychopharmacology at the University of Bristol and a senior member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, said: "People could be vaccinated against drugs at birth as you are against measles."

THATS A HELL OF A LOT OF POWER IN THE HANDS OF PARENTS. I WOULD NEVER EVER FORGIVE MY PARENTS IF THEY HAD HAD SUCH AN OPTION AND THEY'D CHOSEN IT.

A Guardian investigation has learned that over the past six years, the Ministry of Defence has bought significant quantities of a controversial new drug, Provigil, which is designed to help people with specific medical conditions shrug off the effects of tiredness. Preliminary studies in America show that pilots popping the pills remained alert even after 40 hours without sleep. Other tests have looked at how troops function after staying awake for 85 hours on the drug.

the MoD has bought more than 24,000 tablets of Provigil since 1998, at prices at least 10% lower than those charged to the NHS. Released under the open government code, the figures show that orders for the pills peaked in 2001, the year allied forces entered Afghanistan, with the next largest order being delivered in 2002, the year before troops invaded Iraq.

Mr Mutari, speaking through an interpreter, said they were tortured for three days.

"They had competitions among themselves to see who could kick and beat us the most. They were enjoying it. We were screaming and crying for help and the higher we screamed the more they liked it," he said.

He said that the soldiers gave them degrading nicknames, such as "pig" or obscene words. "They would ask us our ‘names’ and we would have to answer to our name or we would be beaten more."

The beatings ruptured one of his kidneys and he nearly died, he said. According to a medical report by a consultant, Mr al-Mutari suffered acute kidney failure of "life-threatening proportions" - almost certainly as a result of deliberate injury.

Police are to use new powers to pick up under-16s in the West End of London after 9pm and take them home to their parents, it was revealed yesterday.

Scotland Yard has designated 16 "dispersal areas" across the capital where officers can impose a curfew on unaccompanied minors. These include tourist spots such as Oxford Street, Regent Street, Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus, and the neighbourhoods around Paddington and Victoria.

In theory, the camera in the Sainsbury's forecourt, in the Greengates area of Bradford, is meant to recognise people who have previously not paid for fuel and vehicles with warrants on them. But, for the first time, it will provide police with a round-the-clock "intelligence" feed, a spin-off from the project that has raised concerns among civil liberties campaigners.

automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) is being used increasingly nationwide as Britain's reliance on surveillance grows. On average, Londoners can each expect to be monitored on as many as 300 CCTV cameras a day as they go about their business. privacy concerns about CCTV are to some extent allayed because it usually does not reveal people's identity - but that this is not true of ANPR.

last week FBI officials went door-to-door in Lawrence, Kansas and neighboring cities trying to find and interview members of a local anarchist group.

"I think they're exploiting people's fear about terrorism as much as possible so as to neutralize opposition," said Scott Pinkelman, 20, who said agents paid a Friday morning visit to his parents' home in Shawnee and called his father at work.

Vanessa Hays said FBI agents went Friday morning to her mother's home in Topeka asking for her and saying she might know someone who was planning a violent act. Hays said she thought such visits were an attempt to put pressure on protesters by getting family members involved. "I'm in the phone book," Hays said. "If they wanted to find me, they could find me very easily."

Neighbors of one of the anarchist group members said that on Friday they saw two different sets of plainclothes officers come to the neighbor's door in the 1600 block of Tennessee Street. "It's creepy," said one of the neighbors, Leslie Witherspoon, who said she sympathized with anarchist views. "It's a little too Big Brother for Lawrence, Kansas."

"whatever you do, do NOT go inside. I would suggest protesting anywhere in Boston but inside of it."

the "free speech zone in boston is a large wire cage that has been built under Boston's elevated train tracks. It has one entrance and one exit. "It’s like a scene from some post-apocalyptic movie – a futuristic, industrial detention area from a Mad Max film. You are surrounded on all sides by concrete blocks and steel fencing, with razor wire lining the perimeter. Then, there is a giant black net over the entire space." It resembles an internment camp and is an affront to free speech.

above is a suspended catwalk of wooden rafters traveling down the middle of the protest area. This strip is not only covered with reams of barbed wire, but officers (or national guardsmen) will be strolling above you just feet from your head.

the zone is actually under a partially constructed building, broken up by gates, iron girders and wooden rafters, in the darkness.

No helicopter will ever be able to see an aerial shot of the people assembled, negating the major points of mass protest: to let the rest of the public see your numbers. This forced 'invisibility' is so painfully obvious, that it is hard to believe it resulted from pure negligence.

The city has tried to force free speech into a cage where it cannot survive. The only reasonable response is to exercise your rights everywhere but the protest zone.

Tuesday, 27 July 2004

"how odd it is that 300 years in the future, people would still only be living to no more than a hundred years."

"in a universe billions of years old, we know from the episode Birthright that there was a thriving intelligence species 4 billion years ago. Why is it then, that so many species that the Federation encounters are at the same level of technological development? The odds against this are ovewhelming."

"why is it that most everyone seems so uniform? Not just officers in the federation, but people generally. It's as if the Federation is one big interstellar, bland suburbia. There is no "Burning Man" wildness. Any character that is outside of this bland standard is often portrayed as a criminal."

The mother of Cuchulainn. There are a number of versions of his birth, of which two follow: one, Dechtere accidentally swallowed a mayfly while drinking a cup of wine, became pregnant from this event, and bore Cuchulainn; two, She was impregnated by the god Lugh with his own soul, and vomited him into life as Cuchulainn, thereby remaining a virgin.

in week nine (out of 10), theres no nominations, all the remaining 6 inmates are automatically up for the public eviction vote, and each is chained together over the next few days, in gender split pairs of big brother's choosing.

Saturday, 24 July 2004

On the folly of gross-out public policy. An interview with Martha Nussbaum

Communitarian and conservative scholars believe that shame and disgust have central roles to play in public life. But in her new book Hiding From Humanity (Princeton), University of Chicago professor of law and ethics Martha C. Nussbaum, who has written at length on moral psychology and emotion, argues that these sentiments tend to distort public discourse in highly illiberal ways.

"My study of disgust and shame shows that these emotions threaten key values of a liberal society, especially equal respect for people and for their liberty. Disgust and shame are inherently hierarchical; they set up ranks and orders of human beings. They are also inherently connected with restrictions on liberty in areas of non-harmful conduct. For both of these reasons, I believe, anyone who cherishes the key democratic values of equality and liberty should be deeply suspicious of the appeal to those emotions in the context of law and public policy."

M3 Real-Skin PenisTired of downloading textures without genital maps? Do you want a real looking penis without having to buy a prop that requires conversion or doesn't fit right? sixteen different texture maps with four different skin colors and four different hair colors. You also get to MAT files to control five girth settings, five length settings, and five different stages of arousal!

Friday, 23 July 2004

According to research from Forrester Consulting, 44 per cent of large corporations in the United States now pay someone to monitor and snoop on what's in the company's outgoing mail, with 48 per cent actually regularly auditing e-mail content.

Whether a Breatharian eats solid food or not is a choice, not a demand. Vegetarianism is relative to eating mainly vegetables for food. Fruitarianism is relative to eating mainly fruits for food. Breatharianism is relative to the breathing of air for food. The average person breathes 110 lbs of air per day. Air contains the basic building blocks for all physical matter, namely four gases, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and oxygen.
(via j-walk blog)

smart dust is also referred to as "motes" or simply "sensor networks." It basically involves mesh networks of tiny devices that sense conditions or movement, transmit data and control equipment. The technology is showing up everywhere from factories to trucks to office buildings.

In most wireless networks, devices communicate with central access points. In a mesh, everything talks to everything else. Motes need only enough power to reach the nearest device and the network can be any size -- messages or packets jump from mote to mote until they reach their intended destination.

Sensicast provides wireless sensors for museums and galleries to protect artworks against theft. Industrial monitoring and tracking air quality are other applications.

motes might some day watch over seniors living alone -- detecting when a person takes medication and monitoring exercise and sleeping habits.

Eight US states and New York City filed a lawsuit against five US power companies for their contribution to global warming, in a historic action on Wednesday.

The states - citing resistance from the federal government - are banding together to force the utility companies to cut their carbon dioxide emissions by at least 3 per cent per year for 10 years.

the companies - American Electric Power Company, the Southern Company, Tennessee Valley Authority, Xcel Energy Inc, and Cinergy Corporation - were chosen because they are the five largest carbon dioxide emitters in the US, operating 174 power plants in 20 states.

"These companies together emit 650 million tons of carbon dioxide each year - 10 percent of the country's carbon dioxide and more than all of the UK,"

The plaintiffs - California, Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, New York state, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin and New York City - say the federal government has failed to take action on the problem.

The Restop Personal Lavatory System is like carrying your own portable bathroom stall, without the weight.

The tent pops up in seconds and is zipped from the inside . The bucket has a special lid with an airtight seal and is used as a commode and to hold the disposable supplies. It also comes with a foam seat which is fitted to the rim of the bucket. The system contains supplies for one person for 10 days.

Thursday, 22 July 2004

George W. Bush is arguably the most influential and controversial performance artist in the history of Western art.

Like Hirst, people love to hate Bush. Many critics refused to accept him as an artist. In fact, part of what makes him a fascinating artist is the fact that he never claims to be one. In this sense, his simulation is impeccable.

The bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States published the final report - almost 600 pages long - following testimony from more than 1,000 witnesses and examination of as many classified documents.

"The 9/11 attacks were a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise," the 10-member panel said:

pearl harbourPresident Roosevelt provoked the attack, knew about it in advance and covered up his failure to warn the Hawaiian commanders. FDR needed the attack to sucker Hitler to declare war, since the public and Congress were overwhelmingly against entering the war in Europe.

the lavon affairThe aim of the Israeli Operation was to bomb United States installations in Egypt, such as cinemas, and blame Arabs.

OPERATION NORTHWOODSAs a pretext for invading Cuba in the heyday of the cold war, American military leaders devised plans to blow up an empty US navy ship, issue a bogus list of casualties and blame Fidel Castro. "We could develop a communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington," said the chiefs of staff. "The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States."

Later the joint chiefs even suggested attacking Jamaica or Trinidad and Tobago and making it look as if the Cubans were responsible, hoping this might force Britain into a war on President Castro to protect Commonwealth members.

In the past three years, in the name of homeland security, a vast, coast-to-coast, combined surveillance and people-scaring apparatus has been assembled, on a scale, and with an intimate reach, never before seen in a democracy. The administration appears to be still learning to play this marvellous instrument, and wrong notes are common. But practice makes perfect.

To live in America now - at least to live in a port city like Seattle - is to be surrounded by the machinery and rhetoric of covert war, in which everyone must be treated as a potential enemy until they can prove themselves a friend. Surveillance and security devices are everywhere: the spreading epidemic of razor wire, the warnings in public libraries that the FBI can demand to know what books you're borrowing, the Humvee laden with troops in combat fatigues, the Coast Guard gunboats patrolling the bay, the pat-down searches and x-ray machines, the nondescript grey boxes, equipped with radio antennae, that are meant to sniff out pathogens in the air. It's difficult to leave the house now without encountering at least one of these reminders that we are being watched and that we live in deadly peril - though in peril of quite what is hard to say.

you were born into bondage; born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch; a prison for your mind.

There are none so blind as those who will not look. If you are one of those who will look, take a look around. You are surrounded -- surrounded by millions who will not look. These are the blue pill people.

An animal rights group on Tuesday released a video it said it secretly taped showing cruelty at a U.S. poultry plant owned by Pilgrim's Pride Corp., and the company's shares fell as much as 5.7 percent. Pilgrim's Pride, the No. 2 U.S. poultry producer after Tyson Foods, is a KFC supplier.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said the tape showed workers at a West Virginia Pilgrim's Pride plant ripping off birds' beaks, spitting tobacco into their mouths and eyes, stomping and kicking live chickens, and squeezing them with such force "that the birds expelled feces."

The tape is the latest in an 18-month-long series of investigations by PETA of companies that supply KFC, the fast-food chicken chain owned and operated by Yum Brands Inc. .

PETA spokesman Dan Shannon said the abuses found at the Pilgrim's Pride facility went far beyond the "routine, standard cruelty" the animal rights group found in past investigations.

Shannon said PETA workers routinely observed crippled chickens and chickens living without adequate food and water on farms in England, Germany, Australia and India that supplied meat to KFC. But he contrasted that to "the really sadistic abuse that we found in this video" from Moorefield, West Virginia.

Wednesday, 21 July 2004

Food scientists working for the US military have developed a dried food ration that troops can hydrate by adding the filthiest of muddy swamp water or even pissiing on it.

The ration comes in a pouch containing a filter that removes 99.9 per cent of bacteria and most toxic chemicals from the water used to rehydrate it, according to the Combat Feeding Directorate, part of the US Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Massachusetts. This is the same organisation that created the "indestructible sandwich" that will stay fresh for three years.

there are many handcrafted devices available to gradually stretch the skin of the penis shaft to take on the job of the missing foreskin. Motivated circumcised men have invented devices including the CAT II RO, Pul-Man, TLC Tugger, PUD (Penile Uncircumcising Device), Foreballs, Tug Ahoy and many others.

The stretching process takes anywhere from one to three years, or longer for less-diligent restorers. But it's cheap, it requires no incisions and it apparently works.

Tuesday, 20 July 2004

The film provides eyewitness testimony that U.S. troops were complicit in the massacre of thousands of Taliban prisoners during the Afghan War.

It tells the story of thousands of prisoners who surrendered to the US military’s Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz. According to eyewitnesses, some three thousand of the prisoners were forced into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison.

Eyewitnesses say when the prisoners began shouting for air, U.S.-allied Afghan soldiers fired directly into the truck, killing many of them. The rest suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds.

Government scientists secretly removed body parts from a national serviceman who died after taking part in nerve gas experiments, a new inquest has been told.

Up to 200 separate samples were taken from 20-year-old Ronald Maddison's brain, spinal cord, heart and skin - without his family's permission - days after he died at Porton Down, Wiltshire, the government top-secret chemical warfare research base, in 1953.

Details of the removal of organs from the airman's body has emerged during a new inquest into his death which opened in May.

The original inquest, held in secret in 1953, found that Leading Aircraftman Maddison's death was accidental. That coroner's report was never released and the only relative allowed into that inquest was the airman's father, who was sworn to silence under the Official Secrets Act. But the new inquest will examine fresh evidence and decide whether the original verdict still stands.

Mr Maddison, from Consett, Co Durham, was among hundreds of national servicemen who volunteered in the 1950s and 60s to take part in tests at Porton Down in the belief that they were helping scientists find a cure for the common cold.

The airman died less than an hour after 200mg of the highly toxic Sarin nerve agent was placed on layers of cloth on the inside of his arm.

The inquest also heard evidence from Alfred Thornhill, an ambulance driver at Porton Down in 1953 who saw Mr Maddison moments after he began suffering from nerve agent poisoning.

Visibly distressed by memories of the event, he said: "I have never seen anything like that, never ever. This lad, his whole body was rippling." Mr Thornhill said that on the way back to the medical centre four people were needed to hold down Mr Maddison because the body convulsions had become so violent.

Mr Thornhille told the jury that he was made to sign the Official Secrets Act and warned that he risked jail if he spoke of what he saw. The inquest continues.

Ronald Maddison

The group of chemicals known as nerve gases were first developed as weapons by the Nazis before and during the second world war. German scientists discovered the potency of these organophosphorous compounds which, in tiny quantities, disrupt a key element of the nervous system.

Human muscles contract when a chemical, acetylcholine, is released from the nerve endings. Muscles do not exist in a permanent form of contraction because acetylecholine is destroyed in a split second by an enzyme (acetylcholinesterase), thus allowing the muscle to relax again. Nerve gases inactivate this important enzyme, and since it is prevented from working, the muscle goes into a state of spasm from which it cannot be relaxed. Victims die because the most important muscles in the body - those of the heart and the rib cage, which control the emptying and filling of the lungs - are paralysed. They suffocate swiftly in a horrifying death.

Since the end of WWI, 20,000 people have taken part in experiments at Porton Down, more than 400 complaints and allegations have been made from surviving servicemen and women covering a period of time from the 1950’s right up to 1989.

According to the myths of the Serrano Indians of California, Pakrokitat was the creator.

He had a younger brother, Kukitat, who was born from his left shoulder. They were always quarreling. Kukitat disagreed with how Pakrokitat made man.

After this Pakrokitat left the world and retired to his own world, Panamam, which he made, the island of Payait. Kukitat made death come to the world. The souls of the dead had to come to Pakrokitat's world after they visited the three beautiful goddesses. Pakrokitat made this happen. Kukitat made men divide into nations and fight each other when Pakrokitat left. After a while the men that were fighting got tired of Kukitat and killed him.

Under the 28 Hour Day system, the current week would remain at exactly 168 hours. (24x7=168) However, this 168 hour period would be divided into six 28-hour days rather than 7 24-hour days.

Now that our society has been transformed by mass production, division of labor, and artificial lighting, there is no longer any great advantage to being diurnal. There are, in fact, considerable advantages to breaking free of the 24 hour cycle.

The word clock doesn't use numerical notation to show you what time it is, it uses ... words. With the Word Clock, 11:55 becomes "Five minutes to twelve." And 11:57:02 becomes "It's about twelve."
(via grow-a-brain)

Saturday, 17 July 2004

dressed in their clown trappings.... "We picked an office building," recalls Perrick aka Fucko the clown. "And in the middle of the afternoon went floor to floor, into different offices, saying, 'We're here for John's birthday!' We'd wander into these meetings where there'd be twenty or thirty suits sitting around a table with donuts.

"We'd steal the donuts, do cartwheels. Chuckles, this girl clown, would rip off her top and rub her tits in some guy's face. The suits would go nuts. All of a sudden, we'd ask, 'Whose birthday is this?' No one would raise a hand. Then we'd start beating each other up, saying, 'You got the wrong floor!' Meanwhile, we've moved on to the next level. We did eight floors before we got thrown out of the building."

plus...

ihateclowns.comanti-clown community and the official site for people who are afraid of or just plain hate evil, creepy clowns.

ihatemimes.comthe official site for people who are annoyed by, or just plain hate, mimes.

touching on such topics as More's history, the current politics of transhumanism and the proactionary" principle, his summary of a collaborative effort to find a more progress-friendly alternative to the internationally influential precautionary principle.

"The philosophy of extropy, as I originally conceived it, was a philosophy of liberation, a radical technological-humanistic urging to break out of the bands that bind human nature."

"....to my mind, taking the advice of Leon Kass or Bill Joy or other posthuman party-poopers and turning around or staying in place simply are not noble or even sustainable options. We grow or we die."

"...we need to dip ourselves into chaos, uncertainty, and challenge every so often. This is not like dipping ourselves into a Jacuzzi. More like a freezing cold shower, a shower that makes you yell with discomfort but from which you emerge refreshed and invigorated."

A group of people that have met through ExtroBritannia have come together to relaunch the British Transhumanist Association. Due to legal restrictions on the use of the word "British" in registering a not-for-profit company, the relaunched organisation will be known as the UK Transhumanist Association, UKTA

Our aim is to inject a healthy dose of transhumanist* memes into all levels of British society through a mix of lobbying, outreach/education, and networking.

3 Laws Unsafe, a web project devised by the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, is based on the premise that Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics are too simplistic to ensure a positive outcome for AIs and robots.

Weight for weight spider silk is actually stronger than steel, holding over 280,000,000kg per square metre (400,000 pounds per square inch) without breaking.

Unfortunately, it's very difficult to farm spiders for their silk because they tend to eat each other. So scientists have tried a variety of different methods to produce the silk without arachnid help.

genetic engineers have now bred goats that have spider silk genes inside them. By doing this, they can harvest the silk proteins from the goat's milk (silky milk, anyone?). The silk gene was just one of 70,000 that make up the DNA blueprint for building a normal goat.

In adult female goats, the silk gene is activated only while the animal is producing milk. One goat can produce about 7g of silk per day.

Called 'biosteel', the silk is lighter, yet tougher than Kevlar, and nearly as elastic as nylon. It could be used in medical supplies, space equipment and bullet-proof vests.

homosexual rites are practiced extensively by numerous Melanesian tribesmen in New Guinea and adjacent islands. Young boys must "accumulate" semen for several years, either by regularly receiving anal penetration, or by swallowing the ejaculations of older males they fellate. This ancient custom springs from a religious belief system that regards sperm as the essential conduit of masculine energy; puny boys, they believe, are only transformed into virile warriors if they ingest large quantities of sperm.

"If you boys don't drink semen, you won't grow big," a Sambian elder tells prepubescent initiates. "You should not be afraid of eating penises ... it is just like the milk of your mother's breast. You can ingest it all of the time and grow quickly. A boy must be ... inseminated... If [he] doesn't eat semen, he remains small and weak."

Although many boys tremble initially ("I felt afraid... the penises were enormous," recalls Kalutuo, a Sambian from the Eastern Highlands) they all adjust quickly, because they believe semen is an elixir for manhood.

Gay male lust is often castigated as "feminizing" in Western society, but Melanesians in Herdt's studies refute this: the sole purpose of homosexuality in their culture is to create "a fierce warrior masculinity that is the inverse of femininity."
(via getting it.com)

Bob Colacello describes the creation of these paintings in his book Holy Terror. "Andy paid Victor [Hugo] to be the collaborator," Colacello writes. "He would come to the Factory to urinate on canvases that had already been primed with copper based paint by Andy or Ronnie Cutrone, who was a second ghost pisser, much appreciated by Andy...."

Warhol himself notes in his diary the secret to Cutrone's technique: "I told Ronnie not to pee when he gets up in the morning to try to hold it until he gets to the office, because he takes lots of vitamin B so the canvas turns a really pretty color when it's his pee."

Supposedly Andy pissed on the first few pictures but then let others do the pissing: "boys who'd come to lunch and drink too much wine, and find it funny or even flattering to be asked to help Andy 'paint."

David Hammons Pissed off 1981This series of photographs documents Hammons urinating on a steel sculpture by Richard Serra, installed in Lower Manhattan. Hammons is arrested for urinating in public during this performance.

Duchamp's piece was an actual urinal, turned upside down and unaltered except for his signature. Levine's Fountain is a contemporary urinal cast in a precious metal--bronze, the traditional material for casting sculpture, and polished to a brilliant shine.

Young male prisoners were filmed being sodomised by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to the journalist who first revealed the abuses there.

Seymour Hersh, who reported on the torture of the prisoners in New Yorker magazine in May, told an audience in San Francisco that: "The boys were sodomised with the cameras rolling, and the worst part is the soundtrack, of the boys shrieking. And this is your government at war."

David Kelly was the government adviser named as the possible source for the BBC's report claiming that the government "sexed up" a key intelligence dossier on Iraq.

four days after he gave evidence to a parliamentary inquiry into the affair, the 59-year-old went missing from his home in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, at 3pm after telling his wife he was going for a walk, according to Thames Valley Police. His family contacted police when he had failed to return by 11.45pm.

the next day, jul 18th, Police searching for him found a man's body. it was officially claimed he had killed himself though many doubts remain.

Vanessa Hunt and David Bartlett, the ambulance crew who worked at the scene of Dr Kelly’s death, made a point of telling the Hutton Inquiry that they were surprised there was not more blood present; they did not see how Dr Kelly could have died from such a small blood loss. For Dr Kelly to have died from haemorrhage he would have had to have lost at least 3 litres of blood.

In his article: "The Murder of David Kelly" Part 1, Jim Rarey points out that cutting the ulnar artery suggests not so much a right-handed Kelly slashing from left to right, missing the superficial radial and cutting deep into the ulnar, as someone other than Kelly standing in front of the body slashing deep into the inside of the wrist (the ulnar side) across to the outside (the radial side) of the wrist.

Although the secondary cause of death was determined to be coproxamol ingestion, forensic toxicologist Alexander Allan reported finding merely 67 milligrammes of paracetamol in the stomach contents (equivalent to one-fifth of one tablet of coproxamol), and blood level concentrations per millilitre of 97 microgrammes for paracetamol and 1.0 microgrammes for dextropropoxyphene (equivalent to approximately 20 tablets).

Dr Allan acknowledged this amount to be three to four times lower than the medically accepted level for fatal overdose. Dr Hunt offered no post mortem evidence of respiratory depression or heart failure consistent with dextropropoxyphene overdose, or of liver damage from paracetamol overdose.

Lord Hutton noted that according to Dr Allan, 'the only way in which paracetamol and dextropropoxyphene could be found in Dr Kelly's blood was by him taking tablets containing them which he would have to ingest.' [HR p 95] But acquaintance Mai Pederson reportedly told police that Dr Kelly had difficulty swallowing pills -- a condition which could be confirmed by family, friends or physician. If true, it is doubtful that he would have voluntarily chosen to ingest over 20 of them.

In addition, as a scientist and biowarfare specialist Dr Kelly would presumably have known how much coproxamol was required to induce overdose, and have had knowledge of and access to faster and more lethal substances.

the entertainment business is peddling false links between DVD pirates and terror cells. This week the Industry Trust for Intellectual Property Awareness (Itipa), the body that represents some of the world's largest film companies, launched a £1.5m "public awareness campaign" to inform people that "terrorist groups sell DVDs to raise funds"

the reality is of course that there is a lot of counterfeit crime of all kinds around, and some of the funds just might go to terrorist groups, although there is no hard evidence of any DVD/terrorism connection.

A couple of years ago, the Bush administration launched a major anti-drugs television campaign. It showed teenagers "confessing" to having killed a judge or a police officer because they had used drugs, and it said that drugs funded terrorism. Even if you were just having a joint in your back yard, the ad said, you could be helping terrorists.

This was nonsense. The main profiteers from drugs in the US are American citizens who, if they are smart, vote Republican to ensure that the value of their product remains artificially high.

A few months later, Arianna Huffington and some creative friends from the environmentalist group the Detroit Project produced an entertaining spoof commercial in which tearful owners of four-wheel drive vehicles confessed to aiding terrorism by their indulgence in oil. The commercial, which produced howls of outrage from 4x4 owners and the car industry, was a joke, but was much closer to reality than the government's drugs ad campaign.

The alleged chief backer of the September 11 attacks made his millions from his family's construction business. So should we stop all house-building now?

although the IRA was widely suspected, the incident happened without their usual coded warning, normally given in order to minimise the chances of human casualties. no culprit was found and no organisation claimed responsibility.

it was the second bomb in London that day. earlier there was an explosion at government buildings in Balham, South London.

Outfoxed examines how media empires, led by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, have been running a "race to the bottom" in television news. This film provides an in-depth look at Fox News and the dangers of ever-enlarging corporations taking control of the public's right to know. view the trailer.

Thursday, 15 July 2004

Canadian transhumanist Justice de Thezier is interviewed by Kristian Gravenor of the Montreal Mirror, with a little reactionary bio-conservatism thrown in from McGill University bioethicist Margaret Somerville.

A new world computer chess champion was crowned at the 2004 finals in Israel on Monday. The new champ is the latest version of a particularly aggressive and human-like software program called Junior.

Unlike most leading chess programs, Junior places less emphasis on the value of individual pieces and more on factors such as mobility and positional advantage. The approach - known as "compensation" - gives the program the ability to find very unusual and daring moves. But it also makes it prone to blunders more reminiscent of human players.

"The manipulation skills required to make a bed -- flipping up the corner of the mattress and tucking in a sheet so it looks straight -- is complicated. Some of those jobs will take a long time before robots can really do them as well as people do them."

A group of Iraqi army officers have staged a coup in Iraq and overthrown the monarchy. Major-General Abdul Karim el Qasim is Iraq's new prime minister, defence minister and commander-in-chief.

Baghdad Radio announced that Crown Prince Abdul Illah and Nuri es Said, prime minister of the Iraq-Jordan Federation, had been assassinated. It said the body of the Crown Prince, the powerful uncle of 23-year-old King Faisal, was hanging outside the Defence Ministry for all to see.

While Iraqis are celebrating on the streets of the capital, Baghdad, the news is a cause for concern for western powers worried about their oil interests and instability in the region. There are fears the Iraq coup will have a domino effect and that the pro-Western oil regimes of Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates may fall to Arab nationalists.

in 1963 Iraq's coup leader and prime minister, Abdul Karim el Qasim, was ousted and killed in a coup led by the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party.

Tuesday, 13 July 2004

Although there is debate over the exact date it started, on November 02, 2000, a person calling themselves Timetravel_0, and later John Titor, started posting on a public forum that he was a time traveler from the year 2036.

On March 24, 2001, John Titor told us he would be leaving our time and returning to 2036. After that, he was never heard from again. Speculation and investigation about who John Titor was and why he was online continues to this day.

This particular microbe was found a mile beneathe the surface in Virginia. Deep underground most organisms would choke from lack of oxygen, but not this bacterium! It doesn't need to breath oxygen. Instead, it breathes iron or manganese dioxide. Bacteria that do not breathe oxygen are called anaerobes.

Sunday, 11 July 2004

The mermecolion has the head of a lion on the body of an ant and its genitalia are backwards. The lion head would want to eat meat, but the ant body could not digest it, so these creatures would die shortly after birth.

A woman with the words "HELP ME' carved on her stomach was killed after she fell off the scooter she was driving on the 79th Street Causeway, police said.

Witnesses said no other vehicle was involved in the 9:15 a.m. Tuesday accident in the westbound lanes of the causeway. They said the victim -- Desiree Lee Campasano, 36, of Miami Beach -- appeared to have lost control of her scooter, hit a curb and then fell off it and hit her head. She was not wearing a helmet. She died at the scene.

a man accused of grabbing a 9-year-old boy, carrying him behind a Kroger store and stealing his socks has been arrested on kidnapping and robbery charges.

Maurice C. Teague told officers he has more than 500 pairs of children's socks.

Police said the child was on his way home from the grocery around 6:30 p.m. when Teague asked to buy his socks for $5. The boy refused again when Teague offered him $10, and Teague picked him up, ran behind the store and pulled the boy's shoes and socks off his feet.
(via die puny humans)

You can switch off/smash/shoot/hack or in other ways avoid Television, Computers and Radio. You are not compelled to buy magazines or subscribe to newspapers. You can sic your rotweiler on door to door salesman. Of all the types of media used to disseminate the Ad there is only one which is entirely inescapable to all but the bedridden shut-in or the Thoreauian misanthrope. We speak, of course of the Billboard. Along with its lesser cousins, advertising posters and "bullet" outdoor graphics, the Billboard is ubiquitous and inescapable to anyone who moves through our world. Everyone knows the Billboard; the Billboard is in everyones mind.

For these reasons the Billboard Liberation Front states emphatically and for all time herein that to Advertise is to Exist. To Exist is to Advertise. Our ultimate goal is nothing short of a personal and singular Billboard for each citizen. Until that glorious day for global communications when every man, woman and child can scream at or sing to the world in 100Pt. type from their very own rooftop; until that day we will continue to do all in our power to encourage the masses to use any means possible to commandeer the existing media and to alter it to their own design.

Each time you change the Advertising message in your own mind, whether you climb up onto the board and physically change the original copy and graphics or not, each time you improve the message, you enter in to the High Priesthood of Advertisers.

It has been calculated that the average American is subjected to some 3,000 advertising messages every day. If you add in everything from the badges on cars to slogans on sweatshirts, the ads in newspapers, on taxis, in subways and even playing on TVs in lifts, then some people could be exposed to more than that number just getting to the office. No wonder many consumers seem to be developing the knack of tuning-out adverts.
(via grow-a-brain)

The US launched a war on Iraq on the basis of false and overstated intelligence, according to a scathing US senate intelligence committee report.

most of the key judgements about Iraq's WMD programmes "were either overstated or were not supported by the raw intelligence reporting," said the committee's chairman, Republican Senator Pat Roberts.

Democrat vice-chairman of the committee, Senator Jay Rockefeller stated "Our credibility is diminished; our standing in the world has never been lower. We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow."

"We in Congress would not have authorised that war, we would not have authorised that war with 75 votes, if we knew what we know now."

however this report focuses its blame on the cia. the issue of whether the Bush administration exaggerated the case for war in Iraq is being investigated separately in a report most likely to be released after the presidential election on 2 November.

meanwhile in another five days Lord Butler publishes the results of his inquiry into the quality of British intelligence on Iraq.

A former Pakistani diplomat told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before sept 11th.

Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July of that year that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October .

Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin.

Mr Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar.

plus july 2003: US report on run-up to 9/11 damns intelligenceThe long-awaited 900-page report criticised the NSA, the CIA and the FBI for a series of intelligence failures that could have prevented the September 11 attacks. The report also confirmed there was no link between al-Qaida and the Iraqi regime led by Saddam Hussein, despite claims to the contrary by President George Bush in the run-up to war with Iraq.

"We call upon our leaders in Washington to disassociate the actions of the Zionist state from traditional Judaism by no longer referring to “Israel” as the “Jewish State” but as “the Zionist State” and to speak out against the Zionist actions which promote anti-Semitism."
(via what really happened)

Norwegian authorities reacted with shock and disgust Tuesday to a documentary on German TV that American soldiers allegedly have been holding children in prisons in Iraq, and abusing them as well. The Norwegians joined the Red Cross and Amnesty International in calling for an immediate end to the abuse, and release of the underage prisoners, some of whom are as young as 12 years.

In one case, a girl around age 15 was said to have been shoved up against a wall by a group of male soldiers who proceeded to manhandle her. They then started ripping off her clothes, and she was half-naked before military police broke in.

In another case, a boy aged 15 or 16 was stripped naked and sprayed with water before being placed in an open truck and driven around in the cold night air last winter. He then was covered with mud

The head of Amnesty International in Norway said Tuesday that Norway should not continue its military cooperation with the US after the reports of child "torture" were revealed.

Most of the more than 100 minors still believed to be held in American-controlled prisons in Iraq were taken into custody after US forces raided their homes.

The survey of 34,000 students, aged 16-18, from 655 high schools showed Adolf Hitler was the most disliked foreign personality with 25 percent of the vote, followed by Bush with 23 percent and Bin Laden with 16 percent.

Bush was even more unpopular than former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, according to the poll.

John Ashcroft's relentless fight against me, my information, and my case, on various fronts, from the Congress to the courts, and from the 9/11 Commission to the Inspector General's Office, has been taking place under his attempt at a vague justification titled "Protecting Certain Foreign and Diplomatic Relations for National Security."

On September 11, 2001, 3,000 lives were lost. Yet this administration has hindered all past and on going investigations into the causes of that horrific day for the sake of this vague notion of protecting "certain diplomatic and foreign relations."

Isn't it time to ask what diplomatic or foreign relations they keep referring to?

Isn't it fair to demand that they should let the people know what kind of foreign relations are worth 3,000 lives lost?